Today the DOJ ordered the IRS to release Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways & Means Committee, reversing one more Trump corruption of the department. I’m not celebrating, but grateful we’re gradually taking back our government from the Orange Fascist. I won’t be happy, though, until a jury reads a verdict of “guilty”.
Not surprisingly, Trump has endorsed criminally indicted and federally investigated Ken Paxton for yet another term as Texas AG. The irony is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. Paxton belongs in the top law enforcement spot as much as beans belongs in Texas chili. Uh, uh. He has so far avoided trial on his original securities fraud charges for over 5 years and is now under federal investigation after his staff blew the whistle on him for everything from bribery to garden variety corruption. With all of his troubles, it’s not surprising that he’s being primaried for the 2022 election. What’s surprising is that George P. Bush, hoping he saw a weak target, threw his hat in the ring to do that. Worse, he also decided it was a really good idea to humiliate himself and embarrass his own family by publicly kissing Trump’s ass to do it to earn the MAGA vote.
Well, that didn’t work. Yesterday, staying completely in character, Trump endorsed Paxton probably because of his criminal indictments and his embarrassing performance in , rather than P, who’s just an opportunistic lightweight. And according to a Trump confidante, Trump reveled in P’s ass kissing, saying,
“…George P. has played this exactly right, and he’s definitely more conservative than his dad, and Trump knows that,” said one Trump confidante who discussed the race with him recently. “But I can tell you the president enjoys the prospect of knowing how much it kills Jeb that his son has to bend the knee and kiss the ring. Who’s your daddy? Trump loves that.”
I’ve always thought that P was a lightweight and a cynical partisan taking advantage of Daddy’s last name. But I never thought he was just a dumbass, but a dumbass he most certainly is. Not only has he humiliated himself, he actually allowed Trump to weaponize his weakness and stupidity to hurt himself, his father, uncle, and grandfather. Hopefully the electorate will see these facts and send him packing back to Florida or wherever. He definitely has no business holding any elected office, especially in Texas.
The FBI arrested Thomas Barrack today, who is a 30-year ally of Trump and chairman of his inaugural committee. They got him on lobbying for the UAE without reporting it, then lying to the FBI about it. The cover up is always worse than the original crime. Apparently the indictment is well documented and damning. They’ve got Trump on tape repeating Barrack’s rewrite of his speech about stopping Middle East terrorism (which was just a cover for filling Barrack’s pockets).
This one is going to be good, and signals that the DOJ is getting closer and closer to His Orangeness.
This is the second excerpt from “I Alone Can Fix It”: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year, by Phillip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig, published in the Washington Post this week. This excerpt is the account of events leading up to and including the insurrection on January 6, and it is chilling to the bone just how close we came to Trump and his goons taking down the government. This is a must read.
Trust me.
UPDATE: Politico is reporting that the DHS is taking the August reinstatement conspiracy theory seriously in terms of stepping up efforts to follow discussions of extremists on social media, concerned about potential violence caused by disinformation pouring our of right wing media and lunatics like the Pillow Guy and other nonsense peddlers. This story is coming from those who are familiar with a private briefing by DHS to members of Congress.
ORIGINAL POST: Seth Abramson, a defense attorney and author, has been after Trump for years. His latest work is digging into how Trumpland planned and directed the insurrection on January 6, but he also has posited the only theory I’ve heard that makes any sense about one of Trump’s most outlandish lies, and that is how he’s going to be reinstated to the presidency in August. Now, you know, and I know that there is simply no mechanism to restore someone to the presidency, even if an election was stolen, which this one most certainly was not. Once the Congress certifies the Electoral College vote from the states and the new president is inaugurated, it’s over, game, set, and match period, end of story. No one outside of the line of succession to the presidency can become president unless he/she is elected in the next national election.
So what the hell is Trump and his loudmouths doing? Why is he repeatedly asserting he will be reinstated? Abramson says that is all a dodge to avoid indictment in NY. Abramson says that Trump believes that with his rallies starting back up and his incessant repeating of The Big Lie, he can keep his insurrectionist based whipped up and the threat of violence would be so great that prosecutors wouldn’t dare indict him for fear of major social unrest. This is the only thing that makes any sense to me, that Trump believes he can keep the grift going long enough to run and win the presidency again in 2024, which will hold back the prosecutorial wolves from the door another 4 years.
https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/1400470960587816961?lang=en
Sounds crazy, right? Of course it’s crazy and I don’t think the NY AG or NY DA give a good goddam about Trump’s fantasies. If they can nail him, they will, and they most certainly owe it to all of us Americans who suffered through over 4 years of the Trump Shitshow to protect our democracy by prosecuting that son of a bitch. I do think Abramson is onto Trump, and having written about him for years, most certainly knows him well enough to have an informed opinion. Besides that, NOTHING else makes the slightest bit of sense.
The Washington Post has published a harrowing account by insiders of Trump’s case of Covid19 last October that was downplayed and lied about since the day he got sick. As we all assumed, Trump was a LOT more ill than his staff or doctors lead us to believe, and he left for the hospital only when convinced how bad it would look if he waited so long that he would be taken on a gurney rather than walking to Marine One. The story also confirms what we all assumed, that he lived ONLY because he was president. WH doctors poured every known treatment to him as he got more ill, including the experimental therapy, the monoclonal antibody treatment. And then HHS secretary Alex Azar pulled strings so Trump could jump the line in front of others. At the time Trump received the treatment, only 10 people had received it. That treatment, and the others performed at the same time (which was unprecedented) undoubtedly saved his sorry life.
Trump’s contempt for science, human life, and common sense is well known. He forced aides to remove their masks in his presence, even while complaining to them that WH visitors would often get too close to him during events he insisted on holding. Covid19 outbreaks became so common that then CDC director Robert Redfield labeled 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as “not safe”. Because of Trump’s defiant ignorance, untold numbers of staffers, their families, and visitors were exposed and fell ill. Almost 900 Secret Service employees contracted the infection, HALF of them special agents who protected Trump, his family, and Pence. God knows how many fell ill from exposure during Trump’s idiotic Hitleresque rallies.
The worst part of this story, though, was that the gargantuan effort to save Trump actually backfired. Everyone had assumed that Trump having a near death experience would change him and he would reverse himself on the Coronavirus response, encouraging mitigation measures and preparing for the vaccine. Doctors were trying to decide when they would start speaking their mind about the disease. Staffers were preparing for a reversal of Trump idiocy. They were all wrong. Literally dead wrong. Trump insisted on returning to the WH early, and when he did return he was still very ill, but even more defiant. He insisted on climbing the stairs on the South Portico and barely made it. He then turned to the cameras and yanked off his mask revealing his heavy orange stage makeup, turned and stalked back into the WH. Nothing changed.
That was the day that hope died because Trump didn’t. And that’s the truth.